Our Young, Brave and Foolish
by superschade
Summary: In which Levi is reminded of one of the military's harshest truths, all because of a stupid pot of stew. Rated for Levi's mouth.


_It's been *years* since I've written or published anything; hopefully this one will help get some of the rust off. Also, I'm still relatively new to the SnK fandomverse, so...have mercy, please... o/o_

_Disclaimer: I do not own _Attack on Titan_. If I did, Eren's jacket would say "Jaegerbombastic" on the back._

* * *

"If you cut yourself and bleed on anything, I will make you throw away every last bit and revoke your meals until the waste has been compensated for."

"Y-yes, sir, I'll be as careful as I can…"

"Not if your hands keep shaking like that. You're going to take a strip off your thumb before long, you idiot."

Sighing, Levi leaned back in his chair at the kitchen table with his arms crossed, watching warily as Eren Jaeger scraped the skin off of a potato with more concentration than probably necessary. Finally, the last strand of peel fell away from the potato—and onto the floor, Levi noted disdainfully—and Eren swiped the back of his hand across his forehead, knife still clutched dangerously in his hand.

"Cooking is a little more complicated than it looks, I guess," he admitted, gazing forlornly at the small pile of potatoes marred with pits and pockmarks due to his unsteady hands. He picked one up and scrutinized it briefly before setting it on the cutting board. "Especially considering that each bite of food only takes a second to eat."

Levi rolled his eyes, partially at the sight of Eren struggling to keep the potato from rolling away as he prepared to slice it in half. "I should remind you, Eren, that doing this was your choice. Quit complaining."

Indeed, the request was the last thing Levi had expected would ever come out of Eren's mouth; although Eren was a hard worker and usually did as he was told without protesting, he was not usually the first to volunteer for chores and household tasks, either. As such, when Eren had first asked permission to use the kitchen, Levi had simply stared at him.

They, along with the newly-minted members of Levi's Special Operations Squad, had spent the entire day moving supplies and personal belongings into the little cabin that would serve as the squad's headquarters after the inside of the house had been thoroughly scrubbed and polished under the corporal's watchful eye. After hours of organizing things and bickering about _what_ belonging to _who_ belonged _where _in the cabin, the team finally settled in. They had decided to use the rest of the day to explore the cabin's surroundings while there was still sunlight, save for Levi, whose ankle injury discouraged needless walking; Eren, who had visited the area a few times before with the former Levi Squad; and Mikasa, who remained upstairs in a sleep induced by painkillers as her ribs mended.

"Sir, I want to make dinner for everyone tonight," Eren had said, bounding down the stairs after checking on Mikasa.

"Come again?" Levi has asked, certain that he'd heard incorrectly.

"I, um, would like to cook something special," Eren had answered, coloring slightly in his cheeks. "Would it be alright for me to get started now? The others don't seem to be coming back any time soon, so I don't know if it would be better to wait for them to help out with dinner when they do get here."

There was an undertone of eagerness in Eren's voice that Levi clearly heard, and, having neither energy nor desire to argue over such a petty matter, he'd waved Eren away to the kitchen, allowing him to cook whatever he wanted to.

"Just remember, Eren, that the food supplies we have are limited, so please do not concoct a vat of gross-ass chicken shit that we'll have to choke down for a week."

Now, as Levi watched Eren's display of rather abysmal cooking skills, he felt increasingly certain that such a fate was inevitable. _Why_, he wondered, flinching as a potato slipped out of Eren's grasp and hit the floor, _is the brat so insistent on doing this?_

"What exactly is it that you're trying to make?" he asked as Eren got down on his hands and knees to retrieve the escaped potato.

Eren wiped the tuber on his white apron before dunking it in the bucket of water he had placed in the sink for washing. "I guess it doesn't have an official name," he said, placing the blade of his knife precariously against the potato's white flesh, "but it's something that my mother used to make for us at special times during the year."

This was not an answer that Levi had expected, but he kept his arms folded in front of him. "Really…"

"Yeah, she did." Eren turned around and leaned back against the sink, the corners of his mouth turned up ever so slightly. "It didn't have to be an important event or anything, but when you walked through the door and smelled that big pot of stew bubbling away on the fire, you just knew that there was something special about that day or about that moment."

He kept his eyes trained on the knife in his hands, running his fingers along the designs in its handle as he spoke. "She would always cook it on the day that it first snowed each winter, as a way to celebrate the change in seasons, and she would also make it on the coldest nights in winter to keep us warm. She made it when our village finished harvesting the vegetables from the fields each season, and she made it on the night before planting began every year to ensure a good crop to come. She made it for me when I broke my arm when I was six. She even made this stew on the night we brought Mikasa home to live with us, you know, even though she had no idea what had happened and had no way of knowing that we'd be taking her in; she just had a feeling that something about that day would be, well, _special_."

Spots of color rose high on Eren's cheeks, and he quickly spun around to focus on chopping the potatoes again. "Of course, we didn't always have the same vegetables and things to put into the stew each time, and meat was really rare so we hardly ever had that, so it was always a little different when we had it, but Mom always made sure to put in the same spices and things. She said that cinnamon would warm the heart, and that thyme would relax a stressed mind, and that rosemary would keep the face rosy—"

Eren suddenly stopped speaking, seemingly having realized that he was offering up too much information, although Levi had not said anything to him about being quiet.

"A-anyway," Eren stammered, a little too loudly for the small kitchen, "I-I just figured that we should do something in honor of the new headquarters, and this was the first thing that came to mind…"

As Eren continued chopping with even clumsier movements than before, Levi found himself furrowing his eyebrows while staring at the boy's form. He rarely asked any of his comrades about their personal histories unless the information was pertinent to their tasks at hand, and he certainly never offered information about his own past to anyone. In part, he kept up this policy out of sheer disinterest in what went on in the lives of others, but Levi was also well aware that everyone harbored memories that they would rather not revisit and preferred to refrain from breaking those dams. Even so, listening to Eren recount bits of his childhood reminded Levi of the undesirable truth that the government insisted on sweeping under their carpet, hoping that it would be forgotten: hearing the innocence and fondness for past days bubble up in Eren's voice, Levi could not see him as a formidable soldier with the ability to shift into a Titan anymore, instead seeing only a hapless child whose youth had been ripped from him.

But aren't we all…

With another sigh, Levi heaved himself out of his chair and walked around the table to where Eren stood at the sink.

"Give me this," he said, pulling the knife from Eren's grasp. He shook his head at the ragged lumps of potato Eren had been working at. "You're no good at this, even though you were taught to cut precisely into the neck of a goddamn _Titan_."

"S-sir, what are you…?"

Levi waved his hand impatiently, cutting off Eren's confusion. "Go fill the biggest pot we have with water and set it on the fire to boil," he instructed, cutting a potato half into uniform blocks. "You said this was a stew, right? You need to heat the water for a while before it gets hot enough to cook food with."

Eren blinked at his commanding officer, stunned. "Sure, but why…why are you…" He trailed off, not knowing how to continue his question. Finished with the potatoes, Levi reached for the carrots and began slicing them into disks. He worked silently for a moment, and then shook his head.

"It's getting dark; the others will be back soon and your incompetent cooking ability won't be able to have the food ready for hours, fool," he muttered, but the unusually soft tone of his voice betrayed the harsh edge of his words. "Just do as I tell you and we won't go to bed hungry." Levi kept his eyes on his work, but he could feel Eren's wide-eyed expression of surprise and mild disbelief as he set to the task of dicing an onion. "Everything just goes into the pot and boils, right?"

Eren started. "Um, yes, right! Potatoes go in first because they take the longest to cook, and then meat if we have it, add herbs and spices when everything else is in the broth, and top it off with a swirl of cream…"

Only half-listing off the steps to Levi at this point, Eren retrieved a soup pot from the shelf above the stove and hurried outside to fill it with water from the well, nearly dropping it in his haste. As he disappeared from sight, Levi shook his head again and pursed his lips, splitting the seam of a pea pod with his thumbnail and emptying its contents into a small bowl.

_Just a damn kid…_

-o-

As the members of the new Special Operations Squad sat around the table that evening, Levi handed out slices of freshly baked bread to the members of his team while Eren made his way around to everyone, doling out his stew from the large pot.

"Ah, yes, the good old bread and soup game," Jean drawled, swirling his spoon dispassionately around his dish. "It's like we never left training."

"Don't be an ass, Jean, this smells, like, a million times better than that watery crap they gave us in the mess hall," Connie exclaimed, slapping Jean's arm with the back of his hand. "And it looks good, too!"

"It, ah, looks…looks _delicious_," Sasha agreed, practically salivating as she inhaled the fragrant steam from her bowl. "Absolutely…delicious…"

Historia laughed nervously at the undisguised, ravenous gleam in Sasha's eyes. "Well, yes, it does look good." She turned to Levi, who was tucking a napkin into his collar. "Did you make this for us, Captain?"

Levi used his fork and knife to cut a section of his bread. "Eren did."

"_Eren_ did?"

Eren, in the middle of blowing on a spoonful of stew, stopped and looked up. "Well, y-yeah, I did. We both did, actually. So what?"

"Nothing, man," Connie replied in between bites. "Didn't know you could cook, is all."

Jean shrugged, eyeing his bowl. "Although, we'd never know if you put something in it, Jaeger, to make us all sick and whatnot."

Eren, upon hearing Jean's suspicions, snorted and nearly inhaled soup up his nose. "Come on, horse-face, that's insane…though now I'm tempted to slip a little something in your portion just to see what would happen," he retorted deviously, causing Jean to scowl.

"Stop it, you two." Mikasa gently touched Eren's shoulder and he rolled his eyes, returning his attention to his food. "It tastes good…and familiar, somehow."

Armin nodded, swallowing his bite of bread. "Yeah, it does taste really familiar." He tore another section of crust off his bread and dipped it into his stew. "You haven't made this before, have you, Eren?"

"No, but my mom used to make this recipe a lot."

"Ah!" Armin's eyes lit up with recognition. "I remember now! She used to put the kettle right on the fire in the fireplace because it was too big to fit on your regular stove, right?"

"Yes, I remember, too," Mikasa said. She blew on the surface of her portion gently and closed her eyes. "Your mother would make this whenever the coldest of winter came around, and when new things were happening."

Eren grinned and propped his hand underneath his chin. "I can't believe you guys remember all that."

Lifting his bowl to his mouth, Connie swallowed the last of his stew. "It's almost summer now, but I could totally imagine how good this would be when there's snow outside."

Sasha, whose mouth was stuffed with bread, nodded fervently. "Make this again for us then, okay, Eren?" she demanded, barely able to get the words out.

Armin laughed. "I promise you it's twice as good in cold weather. So good, in fact, that my grandfather used to call it Carla Jaeger's Miracle Medicine."

"Hah! Are you serious, Armin?"

"I'm completely serious! He even said that a lot of townspeople went to see Eren's dad in the winter to get a taste of the stew."

Mikasa smiled faintly. "I do remember that Dr. Jaeger seemed to have a lot more patients in wintertime than any time else, and Carla never let a patient go before offering them something to eat first."

"Mm-hm." Armin leaned forward towards Eren, who sat across from him. "Hey, do you remember the time my grandfather and I had to spend the night at your house because there was a blizzard outside? Your mom made her special stew for us that time, too."

Eren's eyes widened. "Yeah! Your grandfather came by to see my old man for his stiff back, but by the time they were done the snow had piled up so high that the door wouldn't open! Were you there, Mikasa? I think this may have been before we met."

"I don't remember this happening, so you're probably right…"

"Must be, I think Eren and I were about eight at the time. We got into so much trouble for trying to open the door in the middle of the night, all because you wanted to scoop up a pan full of snow to make syrup candy with!"

"Ha ha ha, what? God, that sounds like such an Eren thing to do!"

"Shut up! I was a kid, and who knew that the door wouldn't close after we managed to get it to open a crack!"

"Eren, common sense would tell you that the door would get lodged in the snow drift, you moron."

"What do you know about common sense, you horse-face?"

"Armin, what happened after that? Did you two get punished?"

"Well, yeah, Carla was furious because we'd let the house get so cold. We had to stay up all night tending the fire to make sure it kept burning all night."

"And all for some snow candy? Man, you must love hardened syrup!"

"What kid doesn't like candy? Armin and I finally got to make some, too, when the snow melted a little the next day."

"You two were getting into so much trouble even before I met you, it seems."

"What else would you expect from these two knuckleheads, Mikasa? Well, maybe not so much from Armin, but definitely from Eren…"

"Hey! What's that supposed to mean?"

"You see, that just proves my point."

"…I am never making you guys dinner ever again."

"NO! Eren, it was so delicious, you can't just take it away forever!"

"H-hey, Sasha, maybe you could put your knife down first…"

As the banter around him continued, Levi closed his eyes and sat back in his seat. He could demand them all to shut up, certainly, and he already had half the mind to do just that, but something convinced them that, just for today, he'd let them ramble. How foolish they all were, getting so heated and engaged in a conversation so trivial; it was almost comical that this haphazard gaggle of youths was a collection of the strongest rising fighters left to defend the entirety of humanity, the only ones who had had enough mettle to step up to the challenge when no one else was willing to. It was a scene that Levi was all too familiar with—these reckless and giddy recruits swelling with ego as civilians cheered them on from the streets, lauding them for their bravery and valor, and returning stricken and haunted, scraping together what remained of their limbs and pride while the onlookers jeered and mocked their teenaged stupidity.

If only they could all see these brave heroes now, Levi mused, beginning to scowl as the chatter at the table grew increasingly louder. If they could see these little idiots as they are now, even as strong as they are, would they still be so eager to push them into battle to cover for their own cowering asses?

He stood and walked away from the noise, placing his dish in the sink before the temptation to hurl it at the loudest person at the table took over, and retreated up the stairs to finally get some quiet.

"…still just a bunch of goddamn kids."

* * *

_Do you ever find yourself staring at Eren Jaeger's 8-pack and suddenly stop and think, "Wow, he's 15"? (Or maybe that's just me...)_

_Just a bit of fluff I had to pick out before I could get the gears of my imagination turning again. I like this series, I think I'll write more for it..._

_Thank you for reading! :_


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